


varied my velocities

by punkpadfoot



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 13:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkpadfoot/pseuds/punkpadfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This should feel like a victory. This shouldn't feel like tiptoeing around broken glass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	varied my velocities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queervengers (nonsexualandsilly)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonsexualandsilly/gifts).



> allie allie allie i love you! i almost went with your shitty/kent prompt because i really wanted to give it a go, but i let myself get the better of me so here this is. in your last prompt you talk about kent and jack learning to become friends again, but also kent learning to be soft again - and that was really interesting to me, so that's where i kind of settled, that point where you're not soft with someone because you haven't been, but you want to be, but maybe you're not sure how anymore, or maybe you're just scared. and maybe it seems easier for the other person, and you don't get it, and it's probably not easier actually but it seems like it and it's hard to be the person on the wrong foot now.
> 
> anyways here's wonderwall. hope u enjoy this!! happy fourth!!!
> 
> (thanks sarah, dakota, & idril!)

_I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched my selves sleep. Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire disgusts me._  
**Birds Hover the Trampled Field, Richard Siken**

-

It’s like this. There’s a room, and you know it well: the layout, the dimensions, which floorboards groan if you step too hard, the well-worn couch at the center with it’s frayed threads, always comfortable. Sticky air, like gulping down summertime laughter in every breath, or sometimes like drowning in the acrid humidity of fear, of sweat. The light is soft and warm and no matter how much it brightens there’s a corner it doesn’t reach, where nails stick haphazardly through the baseboards, where something growls, where your gaze catches in a way that sends your heart skittering, until the growl sounds more like a voice.

“Don’t look. Pretend I’m not here.” 

So you don’t look. So you pretend that corner’s not there.

It’s not necessarily a safe room, but you pretend it could be, because through the window it’s always dawn, bright and pink with the promise of something new.

The door wasn’t always ajar but now it is—if you can find the space to slip in through the crack. That gets easier every day. There wasn’t always a couch and there wasn’t always a window, but now there is. It’s softer now, or it makes itself be so; you haven’t decided if there’s a difference to that. But it welcomes you anyway, you know that much, makes the dark thing skitter back into the corner when you slip in again and again and again, never more than a blur in the periphery.

The thing about places with doors, though, is that they can’t always stay open. This one’s got a lock, never used until it is, until the handle burns to the touch and the dark thing hisses and stretches its claws in the crack between the floor, and the wood of the frame digs a splinter into the pad of your thumb. There’s no skeleton keys or secret passwords. You can bruise your shoulder as much as you like but in the end that only hurts you, not the door.

And the thing about encountering a locked door that you haven’t really considered is that, sometimes, once you finally pry it open, you don’t recognize what’s on the other side anymore.

The other thing about encountering a locked door is that sometimes you become one yourself.

-

Words themselves may not change, and their inherent meanings are generally pretty steady, but the way Kent says them does. A cat is a cat is a cat, but his cat is a _cat_ , and a win is a win is a win, but that was a _win_ , so and and so forth.

Jack is Jack is Jack. For Kent, the meaning stays the same, but sometimes he says, “Jack,” and it sounds like _please_. Sometimes he says, “J _ack_ ,” and it sounds like _fuck you_. Sometimes he says it, and it sounds like _sorry_.

It used to just sound like _Jack_ , he’s pretty sure. To him, at least, but who knows—there isn’t an objective science to this, everyone gets a say and there are no right answers, that kind of thing. Maybe to Jack it sounded loaded all along. Maybe that’s part of the problem.

-

For all that people expecting the first Aces and Falconers game to be a big showdown—and it certainly feels like one, if Kent’s nerves are anything to go by—Kent and Jack don’t spend a lot of time on the ice together. It makes sense, for as good as Jack is (and he _is_ good, which is something Kent has always known and has never had any problem admitting), that there’d be some difference in their skills. Jack’s been playing college-level for the past four years; Kent’s been playing (winning, record-breaking) in the NHL.

It is what it is, but the difference isn’t as entirely marked as Kent would have expected it to be, maybe. He wants to find that frustrating but can’t. Jack’s always been good at lighting a fire under him, intentional or not. For all the divergence in their routes Kent doesn’t forget that Jack used to be the bar by which he measured himself; it’s definitely not the same now, but the competitive spark hits low in his gut anyways.

He expects there to be more of a note of finality to the end, but there isn’t. It’s just another game. A loss is a loss but that wasn’t a loss, not really. He finds Jack grinning at him from across the ice, and he finds himself grinning back. That’s that. The world has not ended. They’re neither closer nor further apart than they’d been yesterday or the day before. 

Maybe that’s what growing up and moving on is, knowing that nothing’s ever going to be like it was, and finding a way to be okay with that.

-

(Their second game together, Jack slides into the face-off circle across from Kent and smiles, small and amused.

“Tired?” he asks, and it sounds like _keep up, Kenny_.

Kent ignores him, looks over his shoulder to gesture to Coops. The Falconers are on their third power play of the game and Kent’s shift has been over for a good thirty seconds, but he can’t seem to manage to get off the ice. His breathing is ragged, burns hard when it hits his lungs, but when he finally settles in and glances back to Jack, he smiles too, a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“Still faster than you.” It sounds like _watch me_.

Jack’s smile slips into a grin, just as easily as it used to.)

-

There’s got to be something to that, Kent thinks. He thinks about the way Jack smiled at him a lot, how he used to then and how he did across the circle now, how there’s really no difference between the two despite the number of years between them. It’s hard to understand, because so many things about Jack have changed and are never going to be the same again, and that’s okay, probably, for the better or something else Kent could say that’s equally as resigned. But that’s the same smile. He wouldn’t have expected that, of all things, to be the same.

It’s hard to understand because Kent had never thought that he himself had changed that much—out of the two of them, good or bad, he’s more of who he used to be than Jack is, he’s pretty sure. And who he used to be used to know how to do this, easily and carelessly, navigating those loose smiles, what to do to provoke them. That one had been unwarranted, nothing he’d worked for and handed over easily all the same. Kent’s always been shamelessly opportunistic, ready to take the chance or the advantage and grab at what’s being offered, so this should feel life a victory. This shouldn’t feel like tiptoeing around broken glass.

-

Jack calls him first on a Thursday morning, at the very beginning of a five day stretch between games, and Kent is so startled by the appearance of his name across his screen that he answers on the second ring, one moment asleep and the next wide-awake.

“Hey,” he says, sitting up and tossing the blankets to the other side of the bed. The cat makes a soft mewl of protest and jumps to the floor with a graceless thud. He clears his throat, tries to sound less like he’s just been dragged out of sleep, but it’s only just past seven. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

“What? Oh—yeah,” Jack says. He sounds a little startled himself, like maybe it’s a misdial or maybe he forgot what he was going to say or maybe he’s just not sure why Kent thinks something has to be wrong for him to call. That’s pretty rich, if you ask Kent. “Yeah. Just wanted to say hey. Nice pass last night.”

Kent rubs a hand across his chest, feels the rapid thumping of his heart against his palm, tries to take a deep breath without making it audible. The soles of his feet hit the hardwood but he doesn’t move to stand yet, just waits another beat before saying, “Okay.” That sounds both lame and rude, and his mother did not raise him to be either of those things, so he presses on. “Thanks. Weren’t you playing last night?”

“I saw the highlights.”

“Okay,” Kent says again, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“That’s all,” Jack says. He used to flounder in moments like this, when the conversation got stilted, making it worse than it already was, but he sounds more at ease than Kent feels (which, to be fair, isn’t hard). Kent realizes his shoulders are tensed and relaxes them. Realizes his toes are curled and flexes them against the wood. Takes a deep breath and doesn’t hide the sound when Jack continues, “Just wanted to say hi. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

This is new. Kent’s spent so much time reaching out, offering a metaphorical hand, an olive branch, stepping in the way when Jack’s tried to ignore him and letting it all get pushed to the side again and again, that he doesn’t know what to do when the peace treaty’s coming from the opposite direction. It feels like something’s being laid at his feet, and all he’s got to do is pick it up, but that involves bending over and bearing his neck. He doesn’t know when the thought of that began to make him tentative but now it does. How many times can a dog bare his teeth before he stops trying to pet it? Admittedly, quite a few.

“You did,” Kent says finally because, at the very least, he knows it’ll make Jack laugh. It does.

-

There’s more, because of course there is, and there’s more to it as well, because there always is with Jack. A scattering of texts a couple of times a week ( _Nice game!_ and _How are you?_ and _This reminded me of you_ and, often enough to be noticeable, mentions of _Bittle_ ), phone calls with a practically timed amount of regularity (more of the same), a nudge or a smile on the ice. 

Kent wants to say _Why now?_ and doesn’t. Instead he texts back immediately. He picks up the phone and laughs in all the right places until it feels like it’s not forced anymore. He nudges and smiles and goads within specified yet unspoken limits that they’ve both been carefully following. It’s nothing but it’s the furthest thing from normal or easy.

\- 

The thing is—the _problem_ is, Kent doesn’t know how to be friends with Jack anymore, and he doesn’t know who to blame for that, or if anyone deserves to be blamed for that, or if that’s just the way life is and he’s only just realizing it. Sometimes you’re friends with someone and then you’re not, and maybe that’s okay. It’s never been like that for him though, friend always meaning something bigger and scarier and more tightly interwoven, _friend_ always coming out of his mouth sounding like _family_. 

Maybe there’s no one to blame for any of it, but it’s easier when he’s got a place to point a finger, even if it’s back at himself.

So on the one hand, there’s Jack, who is always distant, always cryptic—that’s not even anything new, per se. Even when they were kids Jack smiled like he was holding something back, everything he had to say sealed behind tight lips and bathroom doors. It’s not any different now, except that maybe for some people to get him to spill all it would take is a knock rather than a shove. Kent’s not sure what it would take for him. He’s tried them both before, with no luck, and it gets tiring to do the same thing again and again with no results.

But he’s not sure he can blame Jack for that anyways. People aren’t born that way, they’re made into that, and Kent’s had just as much of a hand in that making as anyone else.

The three fingers pointing back point to Kent, who actively tries to avoid being critical of himself, but there’s no point in lying. Sometimes he feels like he spent so much time wishing for closeness that he doesn’t know what to do when it’s being offered anymore; the wanting is a part of him, not a part of his being like a favorite song or a quirk or a habit, but like an arm or a leg or at least a couple of fingers. This isn’t _new_ , just like Jack’s sealed lips aren’t new, a desire bigger than himself always seated just below the surface. But sometimes things solidify themselves in ways you wouldn’t think, get labeled in ways you wouldn’t have guessed. Kent wants to know if something still belongs to him if it’s got someone else’s name on it.

Kent points to a part of himself and thinks _this is Jack’s want, want, want_ , in time with the beating of his own heart. Then he also thinks, _Fuck Palahniuk_ , because the parts of him are not Jack’s anything.

He can’t blame Jack for that, though. That’s not fair. He can’t blame Jack for stumbling into something that was already there. It’s not Jack’s fault that he himself scribbled Jack’s name on it in his own handwriting. That’s not how it works and that’s not how it happened.

So he always falls back into square one: I don’t know how to do this anymore, and I want to try, and I don’t know that it’ll make any difference in the end.

But really, it doesn’t matter what Kent thinks he can or can’t do, what he thinks he’s capable of, because Jack calls. Jack texts. Jack sits down at the barstool next to him at Kent’s kitchen island anyways, a mostly full bottle of beer in one hand and his phone in the other.

“Fancy place,” he says, nudging Kent’s ankle with the toe of his shoe. His cheeks are still flushed with the earlier victory, but even through losing Kent had scored twice and Jack not at all, so Kent doesn’t feel too bad about it. It’s all about balance. “Nice cat.” He leans in to be heard without speaking up, their assorted teammates hanging out in the living room having no comprehension of volume control or inside voices.

Kent smiles, shrugs. “Thought I sent you pictures. Of both, actually.”

Jack shrugs, which Kent takes to mean that he probably actually had, but this was during a time in which Jack wasn’t acknowledging Kent’s existence, and that, Kent has noticed, is something like a black spot in Jack’s memories. If he doesn’t acknowledge it and ignores when Kent does, it never really happened, or something fucked up like that. Kent’s trying to work on not being bitter about it; it does no good to lay out your scars and say _this and this and this are yours_ when no one’s bothering to look.

“It’s nice,” Jack says. Kent thinks he’s still talking about the townhouse, which, in his own opinion, is pretty all right, but Jack continues, “to be like this again. To talk.” He pauses, picks at the corner of the label, rubs his thumb against the condensation on the neck of the bottle. “I’m glad we’re talking again.”

 _Are we?_ Kent thinks.

“Me too,” Kent says.

-

He is glad. Something is better than nothing. Kent doesn’t like to play by the rules but he can play by Jack’s.

-

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

It takes a long time for Kent to acknowledge that, to think, _My rules matter too_. Fuck the something, because it’s not better than nothing if it’s not making him happy. He wants to be mad at himself so he is: this is what he wanted, but there’s no satisfaction in opening a door if his own remains closed. And there’s some metaphor waiting to be said here, about locking your own door and swallowing the key, but Kent is sick and tired of thinking like that, of thinking in circles, of having words stuck in the back of his throat so he let’s them race through his head instead.

It’s June, and the sun is hot on Kent’s shoulders but the half of him sticking below the surface of the water in the pool in his mother’s backyard is freezing. Kent had invited Jack up for the weekend, and Jack had said yes, and Kent wants to be able to ask, _Did you not want to say no because you actually wanted to come, or did you not want to say no because I asked?_

Kent can’t ask that yet, but he can say something else instead.

“You told me,” Kent says, measured, because if he rushes it he might say it wrong like he always does, but if he takes too long he might not say it at all like he’s been doing, so he pushes ahead. The words are inherently careful; the sound of them from his mouth is reckless. “That you were glad we were talking.”

“I did,” Jack agrees, slowly. His feet are the only part of him in the water, and all of him is pale besides the tips of his ears and the tops of his shoulders, which or a bright pink. Kent can hear his mom laughing from the kitchen through an open window. Jack confirms, “I am.”

“That’s the funny thing,” Kent says, and it feels vicious even though he’s got no one to be angry with but himself. “I haven’t been. Talking. I haven’t been talking.” 

“I know.”

And that’s it, there’s the moment, the acknowledgment of the shift. Jack hasn’t been acting like anything’s the same, but he’s also pressed on like nothing’s out of the ordinary—so this feels big. Kent feels it in his chest, a little jagged edged relief. This is different, Kent knows, and he is not the only one who feels this way.

Kent knows other things, too. He knows a lot of things about Jack now: he knows that Jack still worries about what people think, and that he’s more comfortable with media than he used to be, and that he’s having more fun than he did when they were seventeen. He knows that when Jack says he’s just happy to play, he means it. He knows that Jack’s mouth and eyes get soft when he talks about Samwell. He knows when Jack says _my friend from school_ , he says _friend_ the way Kent says it.

He’s not sure what Jack knows about him now. It’s been months and he’s not even sure that he’s told him anything that can’t be condensed into a few lines in a Wikipedia article. Of course Jack knows he hasn’t been talking.

“I wish you would,” Jack says, after a moment. “You don’t have to. But—I mean, if you want to. You could.”

Kent shifts, rest his chin against the sticky hot plastic of the pool tube to settle his gaze on Jack. Jack looks back, and there was a time when that would have said more than his words, but it doesn’t now. It doesn’t say any less either, though, so maybe that’s not a bad thing. Things being different doesn’t mean that they’re bad, necessarily.

So all Kent says is, “Okay.” It doesn’t sound like anything else, and it doesn’t feel like he’s got nothing else he can say. It just feels like the right answer. It feels like enough, for now.


End file.
